to help other VA hospitals start the program. “I wish there wasn’t a need for
it,” said volunteer Bob Morrison, 52. “But there is, and it’s an honor to do it.” More than 30 VA hospitals have
Nurse Marlo Kraus helps veteran Jeff Williams prepare his medicine at the Raymond G. Murphy Veterans Affairs Hospital in Albuquerque, N.M., where a program brings comfort to the dying.
No veteran dies alone
That’s the goal for one ELCA chaplain and volunteers in New Mexico By Mary Beth Libbey
J
eff Williams is a Vietnam-era Navy veteran with cancer of the larynx. He can’t talk or swallow. A thin man in Vet- erans Affairs-issued brown pajamas, he breathes through
a plastic-rimmed hole in his neck and ingests medication through a tube to his stomach. Yet he also sits up to help his nurses administer his medication and offers hospice staff smiles, thumbs-ups and handwritten notes. Someday soon Williams will be
asked if he has any objection to a volunteer sitting with him during the last hours of his life. If he’s like most vets served by the hospice unit at the Raymond G. Murphy VA Hospital in Albuquerque, N.M., he won’t mind. When the time comes, one of 25
on-call volunteers in the No Veteran Dies Alone (NVDA) program will be notified. He or she will sit with him silently, read out loud, put a hand on his shoulder and watch
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www.thelutheran.org
volunteer programs aimed at dying veterans. An estimated 600,000 vets die each year, a number bound to grow due to the aging of World War II, Korean and Vietnam veterans. At Albuquerque’s hospital alone, 250 veterans died last year. Chaplain Kathy, as she is known
around the hospital, has plenty of experience with the chronically ill and dying. During her 12 years serving in the Midwest, Waltz gravi- tated to the homebound. “I loved doing worship, but bringing that to the homebound, to nursing homes and to hospitals [is] my blessing,” she said. Aſter seminary she served at
Kansas City’s VA hospital, where she found herself working primarily with cancer patients and the termi- nally ill. “I just felt connected with them,” Waltz said. When she was hired in Albu-
for a response. A blink, grimace or hand tremor may mean notifying the nursing staff that medical atten- tion is needed. As one volunteer put it: “You are an usher. You are just holding the door.” It’s a familiar role for Kathy
Waltz, the ELCA pastor and VA chaplain who started the NVDA program here and trains volunteers for the 10-bed hospice unit. She and four others from a 16-member nationwide team are putting the finishing touches on a handbook
querque in 2009, she began working with hospice volunteers. Interview- ing volunteers drawn from the hospital’s pool of 1,200, she selected those suited to working with termi- nal patients. During that initial interview with
volunteers, Waltz tries to identify their motivation. If it’s to “save” the vet before death, they are ruled out. “Tat’s a red flag,” she said. “We have an obligation to the vets not to invade their space. If you do, you’ll be asked to leave.” Or if a person says she’s doing
it just “because her friend is,” Waltz won’t sign her up for hospice work. “We know it’s not easy,” she explained. “We live in it every day.”
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE RAYMOND G. MURPHY VA HOSPITAL/BILL ARMSTRONG
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